Here are the simple slides I created to teach a recent getting started with Arduino workshop. Although really the focus was learning how to read Arduino code, rather than any electronics. By the end of the lesson, you should be confident enough to open the examples and play, with a better understanding of the code structure and basic principles.

A very interesting book for me. I’m searching for various books that synthesis and explain key concepts or principles relating to an individual, a school of thought or some other idea. This book does a great job of introducing the key principles of Baudrillards philosophy. It provides a introduce to ideas through example and quotation, with suggested further reading. It aims to be a stepping stone in to more philosophical or academic text that can be intimidating.

Capitalism and consumer culture, mass media and communication technologies have aided the proliferation and multiplication of images in a way never experienced before. Our visual spectrum is choked up with a seemingly endless stream of images, brands, slogans, signs, graphics and labels. [1]

[hyperreality] when our knowledge and understanding of the world is primarily derived through signs that have come to replace reality. [2]

It makes reality ‘real’ to us. But what we consider to be ‘real’ is just another form of illusion, albeit a ‘vital illusion’ that Baudrillard says is critical for a function society. What we need to mindful of here is that the challenge to the real posed by seduction and illusion comes from within the same significatory system. [1]

If it is no longer possible or relevant to speak about the circulation and operation of images in terms of what they represent, then where does this leave art? [1]

Images are no longer the mirror of reality, they have invested the heart of reality and transformed it into hyperreality where, from screen to screen, the only aim of the image is the image. The image can no longer imagine the real because it is the real; it can no longer transcend reality, transfigure it or dream it, since images are virtual reality. In virtual reality, it is as if things had swallowed their mirror. [3: 120]

Art is no different any more from anything else. [3: 18]

Even the ‘creative’ act replicates itself to become nothing more than the sign of it’s own operation – the true subject of a painter is no longer what he or she paints but the very fact that he or she paints. The painter paints the fact that he or she paints. In that way, at least, the idea of art is saved. [3: 91]

The viewer literally consumes the fact that he or she does not understand it and that it has no necessity to it other than the cultural imperative of belonging to the integrated circuit of culture … the consumer moves through it all to test his or her non-enjoyment of the works. [3: 91]

There is something ironic in the way that the art world relies on people subscribing to the idea of art while being expected to reserve aesthetic judgement or avoid making sense of an artwork in a postmodern era where the meaning of things is uncertain. [1]

Generally, we think that photographs can reveal some essence or truth about the object we are photographing. The photo is considered evidence that someone existed or something happened. [1]

The worth of an object is not intrinsic to it – it does not have a pre-existing meaning but transcends material value to circulate among a host of other elements in a signifying chain. Consumption thus occurs “at a distance, a distance which is that of the sign”. [4: 33]

In the end the image and the reading of the image are by no means the shortest way to the object, merely the shortest way to another image. The signs of advertising thus follow upon one another like the transient images of hypnagogic states. [5: 177]

Using the example of reality TV, Baudrillard argues that through the process of consuming the visual spectacle our relationship to images changes. Whereas in the society of the spectacle there is a distinction between images and reality (images alienate us from reality), in the era of hyperreality, we consumer not only what is represented, but the medium through which it is represented. [1]

Baudrillard cites DNA, cloning technologies and virtual reality as examples of the way that the body is reconfigured as data in an era of hyperreality. He understands the body to be a simulation or reality effect based on the production of models with no basis in reality. [1]

He is trying to explain firstly how our understanding of the body is mediated through images and models, and secondly the consequences of this for the body in a simulated landscape that blurs the distinction between material and virtual. [1]

The ‘message’ of TV is not in the images it transmits, but the new modes of relating and perceiving it imposes, the alterations to traditional family and group structures. [4]

The problem is we don’t know it’s [reality] an illusion because any semblance of illusion has been eradicated by hypervisibility of the scene, which seems too real not to be true. [1]

War is not measure by being waged but by its speculative unfolding in an abstract, electronic and informational space. [6]

For Baudrillard, cinema is no longer an ‘enchanted universe’ that generated a sense of illusion by being different to reality. Baudrillard calls for a return to illusion as an antidote to the ‘integral reality’ we are experiencing, and which he claims creates an indifference to images of suffering. [1]

I have uploaded my artificial irrationality research document. This was a new approach for this project to document and rationalise my thinking and research, daily. By updating and improving a single document / mind-map.

This process was intrinsic in my coming to a creative direction and concept early on, given the short time frame to produce a project. It also became a tool I used to introduce my concept and direction to collaborators, quickly explaining who, what and why and being able to follow a single line of through that leads to the most logical project proposal based on the theoretical inputs.

A quick working prototype that allows me to control the background colour of any connected browser window. Including external devices etc. Making an unlimited and scalable multi-screen display. Code is on GitHub.

Technology has divided society. It has created divisions that ignore geography, location, culture, education, race, skin-colour or sexuality. People are now united by common ideologies and behaviours; and conform to collective behaviours and social interactions through technology. Using the very object that created the possibilities, to reinforce the division.

Instead of challenging this we should acknowledge the shifting techno-cultural landscape.

Language, information and imagery are the modern-day cultural artefacts. My tumblr is an archive of my tools and the way I interact with the work, how I live and how I choose to exist in this world, it is digital proof of my existence. Through an archeological viewpoint it is the equivalent of the pottery, ceramics, wood and metal artefacts you might dig up in my home. It indicates my place in society and the world, how I conduct myself in the techno-culture.

Our choice of adoption and uses of technology create the differences between techno-cultures. No two techno-cultures are the same. Two brothers who’ve grown up together, in the same home, with the same parents, and shared many similar life experiences can now have very different techno-cultural persuasions. Equily, two individuals from different locations on the planet, with different physio-cultures and education can share common behaviours, rituals and experiences, they can express themselves to each other beyond the constraints of language. They are united through their techno-culture.

How do we measure cultural diversity in this new landscape?

How do ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ cultures still affect the techno-culture as a whole?

What is techno-cultural-archeology?

What does it mean for one techno-culture to the block access to information and imagery for another techno-culture?